The Rubbish Heap in the North Sea

Returning to his home in France after some time away, Dalrymple is reminded that
the French bureaucratic state is more efficient than the British one:

The main explanation of all this is cultural. The French have had far less
state-sponsored and funded stupidity than the British. It is difficult as a
result to find in France such concentrations of people whose labour no one would
want even if it were free of charge. The state, overweening as it is in France,
has not acted as consistently in the direction of promoting vulgarity and low
standards of public conduct as in Britain, where an ideological attachment to
the lowest common denominator has become a badge of political virtue and
democratic sentiment.